


Iron Steve

by AvocadoLove



Series: Captain Stark/Iron Steve [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Origin Story, Role Reversal, Steve Rogers is Iron Man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 22:26:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1281037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvocadoLove/pseuds/AvocadoLove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Steve wanted was to take time away from his workshop to present the new Jericho missiles to military meatheads, but Obie insisted he needed to prove he wasn’t a complete reclusive workaholic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iron Steve

**Author's Note:**

> I keep telling myself I'm waiting until I finish one of my other projects to write the main Steve/Tony fic. Until then, here's Steve's origin story. It wouldn't leave me alone. :)

Steve Rogers barely heard the knock on the door to his hotel suite. His focus was on the floating propulsion array arranged on his virtual desktop in front of him. The portable system wasn’t nearly as powerful as the one in his workshop -- the holographic simulators had an annoying lag time, and he hated it when he had to wait for his computer to catch up to his thoughts.

“Jocasta, can you boost the output on micro-engine three by two point four percent?” he asked, right hand absently etching equations into the air in flowing penmanship. “Show the results in the equivalent atmospheric pressures at both ten-thousand and twenty-thousand feet.”

“At once,” the soft feminine voice of his AI replied. “Should I also adjust for average temperatures at those elevations?”

“May as well.”

Steve bit his lip as lists of computations scrolled through the air. The results weren’t what he wanted. Still etching the air with his right hand, his left tapped out a new set of parameters.

The door behind Steve opened, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Bucky stride in, slick dark jacket over a dark blue dress shirt. Steve didn’t know how he’d gotten past the lock on the door -- maybe he had called hotel security, but knowing Bucky he’d probably jigged it with a credit card.

“Hey Bucky,” Steve said, swinging back around to his work. “Time to go already?”

Bucky sighed. “Don’t bother.” And he thumped a tasteful glass trophy Apogee award on the table beside Steve’s elbow. “Ceremony was an hour ago, Mr. Ignores-His-Panicked-PA’s-Calls.”

“...Oh.” Steve picked it up. The trophy felt cold and lifeless in his hand, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. “How was it?”

“I hated every minute. They called you the Mark Zuckerberg of engineering, even though you started your company about decade before that piss ant came along.”

Steve set the award to the side. “I had a feeling Facebook was a WMD.”

“Funny. Obadiah covered the acceptance speech for your sorry butt, then he yelled at me for your no-show.” Bucky crossed his arms.  “I told him I was your man-secretary, not your keeper.”

That made Steve wince. “I’ll smooth things over with him later. I just--” He gestured to the display. “I wanted go over the specs before the presentation for the generals tomorrow. Then I got an idea to increase the payload by a decent percentage. And, well.”

“Uh-huh.” Bucky leaned forward and waved his hand through the holograph, cutting the image into two and making Steve squawk in protest. Revenge achieved, Bucky leaned back. “You know that military brass only cares that your missiles blow stuff up, right? Not how you do it?” He paused. “Or is this about impressing a certain pretty Colonel?”

“You’re missing the point--”

“Uh-huh,” he repeated, in the exact same tone of voice. Bucky reached to the tall stack of paperwork, teetering at the very edge of the desk. “At least tell me you signed the order sheets I left for you -- oh good.” He made a mollified sound, seeing Steve’s formal, almost calligraphic signature at the bottom of every page. He set the files aside and raised an eyebrow at Steve. “The ceremony’s done, I made excuses to all the business contacts you managed to snub today, and that means you _owe_ me.” He paused. “Even more than usual.”

“Bucky--”

“Boss.” He gave Steve a look. “You let Obadiah drag you to Las Vegas for this stupid thing, and now you’re going to spend all day cooped up in your hotel room? C’mon, you promised me a vacation day, I'm going to the strip, and I need a wingman.”

Steve sighed. Tomorrow he was scheduled to catch a plane to Afghanistan for a presentation-bid for an exclusive military contract. He was no good at public speaking, or… schmoozing. But Obie had insisted Steve needed to show his face in an official capacity and prove he wasn’t the reclusive nutcase the tabloids made him out to be.

He was going to miss out on so much _actual_ work.

“Hey, it’s your name on the company logo,” Bucky reminded Steve, reading his expression.

“That’s what they tell me,” Steve muttered.

Bucky’s shrug was at least a little sympathetic. He’d knew how much the ‘business’ part of Steve’s business bored him. Steve had started Rogers Incorporated in his second (and last) year at MIT as a means to an end, but the sheer workload of being CEO had somehow slowly, chipped in what he really wanted to be doing -- engineering and creation. That’s why Bucky had been hired as his PA, fresh out of Harvard Business school.

Their relationship shouldn’t have worked. Steve was supposed to be Bucky’s boss, not his best friend. Somehow, over the years, he’d become both. 

“Call Obie and tell him you aren’t going to do the presentation tomorrow,” Bucky suggested, probably reading Steve like a book. “He can get someone else from the board to cover it.”

“Easy for you to say, you jerk,” Steve said even as he signaled Jocasta to save his place. “Fine. I’m going out, but so help me if you try to buy me another hooker. Don’t think I forgot Monaco.”

Bucky’s grin was sharp. “He showed you a classy time, right?”

Steve’s cheeks burned, “He was--That’s not--"

But Bucky just swung an arm around Steve’s narrow shoulder. “C’mon playboy, maybe I’ll let you buy me a date tonight, instead. Call it my Christmas bonus.”

“Wait.”  Steve gestured longingly to the desktop. “I said I was going with you, but first I should finish--”

“Nope!” Bucky had always been taller and stronger than Steve, and used it to good effect, swinging him around to the door. “Vegas is calling, and there’s no rest for the wicked.”  


  


****

  
  
  


“In conclusion, the new Rogers miniature propulsion systems are more efficient and effective than last generation’s turbofan engines,” Steve finished, looking up from his cue cards.

He squinted hopefully through the bright high Afghan desert sun, over the assembled generals. He got blank, bored stares in return. They hadn’t followed his lecture -- or simply didn’t care about the technical aspects. Bucky had been right. All they wanted was the big kaboom.

Steve sighed. Really, they were missing out. The new defense systems were like… art. But if they wanted something to blow up…

He tucked the cards away. “Well, I guess you need to see it to believe it. Ladies and gentlemen,” Steve squared his shoulders, feeling stiff under the suit his tailor insisted made him look slim not skinny,  and reached to key the command to fire. “May I present to you, the Jericho.”  


****

  


“Excellent work, Steven,” Colonel Carter told him later, while the assembled group of now slightly windblown military brass were heading back to the humvees.

She looked beautiful with her brown hair pinned back and the metals and pips bringing a dash of color to her military blues. It was everything Steve could do not to smile too dopily at her. The chance to see Carter was most of the reason he’d agreed to come at all, and his next words tripped out before he could stop himself. “Thank you, Colonel. With the new generation of Rogers weapons, your people should be in good hands.”

That earned him a tight smile. Carter gestured to the next in the line of humvees. “Indeed. Shall we?” 

Reading Colonel Peggy Carter was an almost impossible task, and Steve was glad Bucky was back in their Brooklyn headquarters so he couldn’t laugh as Steve tried, and failed, to strike up a meaningful conversation on the ride back. They'd known each other for years, ever since she had been assigned as the official liaison between the military and the company. And sometimes it seemed to Steve that they were both waiting for the other to make the first move.

Or maybe it was just that all Peggy and he had in common was work, and outside of Rogers Inc. and the military, their circles didn’t interconnect.

“We’re ETA twenty-five minutes from base, Colonel,” the driver reported, several minutes later.

Steve turned to the speaker in surprise. “You’re a woman?” Then he caught himself. “Oh, uh, I didn’t mean it like that. Ah, of course you are--You. You’re very pretty.”

It didn’t help that the infantrymen around him were hiding smirks.

“Excuse him,” Carter drawled. “Mr. Rogers never learned to speak properly to a woman.”

The driver didn’t smile, just replied with a stilted, “Yes, ma’am.”

And Steve would have liked to bonk his head against the side door, except Peggy’s hand clasped around his, giving him a friendly squeeze before releasing.

Their eyes met. Hers were warm.

Then there was a sudden thunderclap of sound, and the humvee rocked and came to a sudden, screeching halt. Steve glanced around wildly -- only to be shoved down as bullets thwacked against the armored car. One of the infantrymen screamed, and Steve was peppered with pellets of safety glass. Damn, the bullets were punching in.

Steve glanced up to see Peggy open the door. “No!” he yelled. “Those are armor piercing rounds!”

She whipped around, and her glare was all authority. “Steve, keep down and stay inside!”

Then there was another explosion -- loud and close and filling the entire vehicle with choking dust. Steve’s ears rang in a high pitched squeal. He looked around in a daze, seeing a handgun not too far away, still in the limp hand of the woman he’d accidentally insulted. He grabbed the gun, ducking again at another spray of bullets rattled through the car, creating bright shafts of sunlight in the holes. He was a sitting duck in here.

He more or less fell out the door, looking around wildly. He needed to call for help, needed to do something, anything. There was gunfire everywhere, but with his ears ringing and the dust kicked up explosions he wasn’t sure which direction it was coming from.

A downed form lay by a scattering of boulders, not too far away. Peggy. It looked like she had tried to use the rocks for cover, but… she wasn’t moving.

“Peggy!” He ran to her, lifting the gun to fire at shadows just over the next rise. Then he was kneeling beside her, a hand on her shoulder to turn her over and assess the damage.  Her eyes were open and blank.

Steve had no time to process what that meant before something landed with a metallic thunk not five feet away. He looked down and saw the familiar Rogers logo on the casing.

 _Oh no,_ he thought.

It must have exploded because the next thing he knew he was flat on his back, blinking up at the sky. A sharp pain shot through his chest, stealing his breath. Staring down, he saw a red stain spreading across his shirt, over his heart. The shrapnel had pierced his armored vest.

It was just as good as he’d designed it.

Rough, unfamiliar hands grabbed him, and someone pulled a dark bag over his head, punching him in the stomach when he tried to resist.

Coughing and gagging, Steve stumbled where they pushed him until he was loaded into another car. Men shouted in his ear, and none of it was in English.

 _They have my tech..._ he thought, and collapsed slowly to the side, the pain in his chest redoubling until he couldn't breathe without tasting copper. _They killed Peggy with my tech..._  
  



End file.
